Darna Zaroori Hai
Topic: Movies

Darna Zaroori Hai - Hindi movie from Ram Gopal Varma camp. RGV and his disciples make a sequel to 'Darna Mana Hai'.

Decent movie. 6 stories. Spooky ones. Some nice ones and some not so good. The ones involving Rajpal Yadav and Randip Hooda are really gripping . Others so so.

Photography and editing which have become the highlight of RGV productions are good in this too. They know how to capture in right angles. In one of the last scenes when the last kid is desperately trying to get out of the spooky house, camera alternates between frightened kid and a haunting balcony at the top floor with a single light. That is simply mastery.

Time pass. 3 stars.

Cheers!

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36 China Town
Topic: Movies

36 China Town - Hindi movie with big star cast - Shahid Kapur, Kareena Kapoor, Payal Rohatgi, Paresh Rawal, Akshay Khanna, Upen Patel (debuting).

Abbas-Mastan, directors, disappoint. They try to create a mystery where there is none. They nail some totally impossible people as perpetrators of some crime which nobody can understand how it happened.

So, what is left in this? Nothing much. Upen Patel, of course. Looks like he is building a nice golden bridge from modeling to movies. Smart thing to do as dudes do not last long in modeling. In movies, they last little longer.

Music - first song is good. Otherwise, do not know what Himesh Reshimiya these days itna-bhav-kha-raha-hai.

Waste.

2 stars!

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Lemonade from Lemon

"If life deliverers a lemon, make lemonade out of it."

Following two stories illustrate best lemonade made from some of the bitterest lemons life delivered to some people.

Both of these are found in Dale Carnegie's timeless classic "Stop worrying and start living".

In Arabic there is a term that is often used. That is - "Maktoob" meaning "(It is) written". If an Arab loses a big bet in a casino, this is what he exclaims raising both hands to sky. It is used to mean - "it is all God's will". People tend to mistake this for fatalistic mentality. But, people who use it, use it differently and most effectively.

What is the first thing necessary to recover from a setback? Recognizing that some screw up has happened is indeed the first thing towards recovery. Without that realization, we are in denial about the mishap. This realization is not all easy to come because what has happened defies all rational thinking (or what we call rational thinking at that moment even if it is utterly irrational). So, saying 'Maktoob' or "it was all God's will" helps us to transfer all the responsibility to God and take some solace that since it was God's will, it must be for eventual good.

Once we calm down after saying 'Maktoob', we can set out to take some remedial measures. Dale Carnegie quotes an incident related to nomadic Arabs wandering god forsaken desert in northern Africa with their one and only asset - sheep. Once the caravan was caught in a severe sand storm. Most of the sheep were dead when the sand storm subsided. Arabs were sad for a moment that they had lost good 80% of their assets. The leader exclaimed famous 'Maktoob' and the rest knew what to do. They systematically slaughtered the sheep which had not yet deteriorated. They smoked and processed the meat so that they can use it in the future. After that they moved on with their nomadic journey. This is one case making lemonade if life deliverers you a lemon.

Second incident, again from Carnegie's "Stop worrying and star living", involves a man in Florida.

Do you know there is a place called Rattlesnake in Florida. Follow this link to see for yourself - http://www.pburch.net/Genealogy/burch-fisher-Pages/Image19.html

There is a amazing story behind how this place came to be called as Rattlesnake. Long ago, a man bought some land around this area. He had some plans for this land. But, it was infested with rattle snakes and only rattle snakes. This man was perplexed. He had purchased the land with some idea in mind. He had not noticed rattle snake menace and now he was in this predicament. Land was useless. He hit upon an idea. Why not make lemonade from the lemon? There were abundant rattle snakes. Put them to good use. He developed a complete industry around rattle snakes. He farmed them to extract venom for vaccines. He started a meat processing plant to package rattle snake meat (yikes) and what not. Over time, he became famous, rich and an example for all those who got lemons and made lemonades out of it. This man did not get any ordinary lemon. He got bitterest lemon and made lemonade out of it.

So, always remember to say 'Maktoob' and set out to squeeze that damn lemon. Lemonade shall be made. That's God's will.

Cheers!

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Gangster
Topic: Movies

Gangster - Hindi movie starring Shiney Ahuja, Kangna Ranaut, Irfan Hashmi etc.

What a nice story line? But, they have botched it up thoroughly. Entire cast is immature to make a great movie on such a great story line. Characters played by Shiney and Kangna are loaded. They need someone who can really act. But, these two people simply can not do justice to their respective roles.

Director Basu disappoints. Poor cinematography. No idea what's up with Bhatt camp films. But for some strange reason they process their films to look really poor. So little light. Everything seems to take place under neon lights and in dark back ground. "Kalyug" was like that too. Only if there were to shoot and process in more brightness, it would have been lot more bearable.

Supposedly based on the story of gangster Abu Salem and his girl friend actresses Monica Bedi. Even if there is any, there is very little connection.

2 stars

Ability
Topic: Quotable Quotes

Ability will never catch up with the demand for it.

-- Malcolm Forbes (1919 - 1990)

There is a saying which goes something like "better you get, you better get better". As we get better at something, we are awarded a new challenge. If not for this we never evolve out of our comfort zone. It is also true that with right preparation we are presented with right challenge which is indeed a stretch but we can accomplish it if we put little more.

Lord is a master goal setter. Lord knows more about stretch goals than we can afford to set ourselves. So, instead of wasting time setting goals and sizing ourselves up if we are adequate or not, we should take challenges head on and chances are we succeed if the end and the means used to achieve it are just and right in the eyes of Lord.

Sri Easwaran's writes in of his books -"we all have right amount of burden to carry. Not one pound less than we are capable of carrying or not one pound more." To begin with, our ability to carry this load is miniscule. But, with some years of life, we come to realization that we have a large load of Karma to carry and get rid of. We preferably want to accomplish this as much as possible in this very life. That way we can complete as close as possible to the final goal or God willing even achieve it.

What is the way to manage more load than we are capable of carrying? Magic word is leverage. We use it without much thought in every other aspect of our lives. But, when it comes to carrying our load of Karma, we forget that we can leverage that too. Our most efficient lever is the grace of Lord. Use him for your support to carry Karma load and you can immediately gain tremendous leverage. That's why it is said -"belief in God is the surest sign of wisdom."

Cheers!

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Success
Topic: Quotable Quotes

Men are born to succeed, not fail.

-- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)

Nice quote about success from Thoreau. Many other quotes can be found at -http://www.quotationspage.com

"Men are born to success, not fail." - this quote reinforces that regardless of what we are today and what we many have encountered in the past, we are bound to be successful.

It is a different matter if the state that God finds as success does not match our definition of success. When it does not match, we curse our luck. We have a very limited view of the life as we see it and not necessarily as the life really is. So, we think this or that is good for us and that indeed is success. When do not get what we want, we forget to take minute to see what we may have gained in the pursuit. Invariably, there is something to gain for every experience. Even when we do not get, say a coveted job or a position, something is being said about the whole thing. We may brood for a day or two or sometimes even entire lifetime for not being successful at that particular endeavor.

However, God chose that it was not the best for us at that moment of time. This insight is very hard to come before we have had some experience in life. Not at all easy before 30's as it takes around 30 years to see one cycle which can be thought to be something like a mini life cycle. If we live for another 60 years or so, we can expect basically same cycle to repeat in a different form. But, we can reflect and mend our ways so that remaining one or two cycles end up being different and better. This fundamental notion that we are all born to succeed to should help us reinvigorate ourselves and pick ourselves up from minor deviations and move on.

Sometimes, we all lose our ways and take a wrong detour. Sooner we come back to the main road, more gas we will have left to complete rest of our journey. It does not matter even if we develop this insight very late in life.No need to regret that we have only 10 or 15 years left at the most. We are all assured by the Lord that he would preserve our good deeds in this life and help us start exactly at the point where we left off. It is like Lord taking us and positioning us at a particular point on the running tracks so that we are given credit for the distance we have already run. So, without despair, we can set out to do what we want to. If what we want to do is just and right and is good for us in the eyes of God, we will be blessed with that. If not, take heart and understand that it was not meant to be.

In Bollywood, they have a saying in hindi -"waqt se pehele aur naseeb se jyada kisi ko kuch mila hai aur milega bhi nahin.". This means - "no one has got anything before the time is right and no one has got anything more than they deserve." This should not be viewed as a fatalistic mentality. It is a realization that follows after some years of getting some things and getting sheer disappointments in pursuit of things that were not meant for us. But, good thing is that, when this insight comes, it comes along with a lot of discretion as well. We also develop insight to pursue things that are good for us relentlessly rather than giving them up at the first or second minor obstacle.

Cheers!

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Incredible experiences - Bhagvadgita

Two incredible experiences. Seem to come straight from Ripley's believe it or not. (http://www.ripleys.com/)

1) This is from someone I know very well and full trust. So, no reason even to suspect anything here (at least for me).

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Ask v/s speculate
Topic: Quotable Quotes

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Communication
Topic: Quotable Quotes

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Boredom
Topic: Quotable Quotes

"[S]he refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn't boring." by Zelda Fitzgerald

Are we responsible for whether we feel bored or not?

Another saying is - you don't like to do things not because they are boring. Things become boring because you don't like them.

If we give some thought to this, it does seem to start making sense. How often something we found dreadfully
boring to begin with turn out to be something that we cherish and feel proud to have produced it? Normally, we can think of some document we had to write or a paper we had to turn in for school. Next time when it happens, if we document how that happened, we will see that there is a pattern or a couple of patterns.

One pattern that is not that useful is being under pressure. That is the pressure of time or some other external source (such as customer, boss etc.). This does not produce classics although it may have forced you to complete the tasks.

But, think of the other pattern. That normally goes like this. With great difficulty, you garner enough strength to start the first step. It is not unlikely that you drop from it few time only to come back and start from the beginning with more and more agony. After few such false starts, something changes and the product that you need
to produce starts taking shape. If it is a document, you are pounding away. You are not typing one sentence and staring at it for 10 minutes only to discard the document and start afresh. Also, some coffee may help. So, you
take a break too. No, here you are producing at best. You are not able to type as fast as your brain is cranking out ideas. You may end up doing a marathon writing session. It is not unusual to see people 'in mood' not leave their
chairs for hours. At the end of one such session, you would see that you have accomplished a great deal. The product seems to have become something we can continue to evolve further without frustration or lack of ideas.

How did it happen? We do not ask this question many times. It is important to dissect this process once at least so that we can capitalize on the insight we develop. If we have to sum up the experience in one sentence, it is TIME.
More time you allow ideas to ferment in your subconscious mind, better work is produced. So, take your time. Start as early as possible to give yourself enough false starts. In way, there are not false starts at all. They are your
attempts to get fermentation start on the best footing possible. If you produce something under pressure, you will not have the luxury of fermenting your ideas, you may just get back the mixture next day without any flavor or
content. Your work does not produce "kicks".

We have to always remember 'slow and steady' wins the race. Has the topic gone from boredom to something
else? Not really because many times our boredom is closely related to certain specific tasks that we must accomplish. Unfortunately the task that we have to accomplish does not come to us naturally and it is not one of our core
strengths. In the same time it is also not something that we can not do. It is one of these things that we all have such
it-is-not-my-favorite-but-I-know-I-can-do-decent-job-if-I-apply-myself kind of task. We all have had subjects that we did not like in the school. Nevertheless, we passed and in some cases, we may have also excelled. Same here.

One thing that may help is to pay more attention and apply more concentration to things that do not come to us naturally. This will help us detect pit-falls early and consciously. This will enable us to guard against dropping the
tasks that we have begun. This may not make it any less painful. But, we will probably remember to come back and pick it up where we left off after 15 minutes of break rather than 15 days of hiatus.

Cheers!

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Neck
Topic: Quotable Quotes

Gita - Tagi and Sri Ramakrishna's wisdom
Topic: Thought for the day

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People and human beings
Topic: Quotable Quotes

"There are too many people, and too few human beings."
Robert Zend

It can be further modified to - "there are too many humans too but only a few
spiritual beings.". I think once Wayne Dyer said "we are not human beings
trying to have spiritual experience. But, we are spiritual beings having
human experience." Once we recognize ourselves and every other life form as
a spiritual being, a lot of separateness goes away and we start seeing unity
between people and also between people and other forms of life. Thinking in
terms of spiritual beings makes us look at all forms of life being same and putting
different casts such as humans, animals, insects and organisms in the drama called life.

Cheers!

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Universe & Chinatown
Topic: Quotable Quotes

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Arafat : in the eyes of the beholder / Janet Wallach and John Wallach.
Topic: Books....

Arafat : in the eyes of the beholder / Janet Wallach and John Wallach.

This book is "we report, you decide" kind of biographical book about Arafat. Researched and written well. Authors write in detail about their time spent with Arafat. There are many interesting things to know such as how Arafat used to keep his schedule very secret and how he used to travel relentlessly. In one instance he visited 40 odds countries in less than 3 days.

A lot of information is also commonly in found in other books about Arafat. Authors here take a more balanced look than taking one or the other position. One area in this book that is not touched in many other books is secret back-door negotiations that went between US and Arafat when US denounced Arafat and PLO in public. US had chosen to open secret doors to PLO after US ambassador with his Belgian counterpart was held hostage and killed in Khartoum, Sudan in 1974 (I think). US was upset. But,it was also concerned about minimizing the impact from PLO terrorism. US did not have to take very strong "my way or no way" stand that Israel took. Israel was right because without such a stand, it would have been wiped out being one and only non-Arab state in the heart of middle east. But, US interests were spread much wider and US had to be more pragmatic. So, they chose to deal with PLO. Who was their contact? Notorious, "red prince", Ali Hasan Salameh. Salameh wanted to deal with US because he thought it would bring more credibility to palestinian struggle. However, when CIA tried to make him a paid volunteer for CIA, he got upset and temporarily broke off. He was again in CIA camp. It is said, it was Salameh and his Force-17 commando force that protected US interest in Beirut and other areas. For his services Salameh was treated royally by the US. When Salameh married Lebanese beauty queen (crowned Ms Universe) Gerogina Rizak, CIA arranged for his honeymoon visit to the US as a gift. It was all going well and Israel was concerned about increasing coziness between the two. They were also in a bind. They wanted to eliminate Salameh like they eliminated many other alleged perpetrates of Munich massacre. Since Salameh was serving US interests, eliminating him like others would have upset the relationship between US and Israel. So, Israelis, in one meeting, between CIA and Mossad asked CIA if Salameh was a CIA man. They said if CIA owned up that Salameh was a CIA man, they would not harm him If not, they would. CIA could not own up in black and white because they knew Mossad was only too happy to leak that and embarrass US. So, they squirmed and kept silent. Israelis rejoiced in silence and went ahead with their meticulous planning. Salameh who had survived many attempts on his life including infamous Lillehammer debacle was blown up into bits in a remotely trigger car bomb in Beirut in 1979.

Another section in this book that is interesting is about the love-hate relationship between Jordan's late king Hussein and Arafat. King had silenced PLO in 1970 in what is known as Black September operation in which Jordanian forces drove out Fatah militants out of Jordan. Several Palestinians were killed. Arafat and his cronies had sworn revenge and several Jordanian diplomats were killed as revenge. Even attempts were made on King Hussein's lives. But, he survived but his ministers and ambassadors in several countries such as India were not that lucky. But, in the interest of peace in the region King Hussein made up with Arafat only to be frustrated by Arafat's fickle mindedness during peace negotiations.

Good book.

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Infiltration : How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington (Hardcover) by Paul Sperry
Topic: Books....

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The Intelligent Investor: A Book of Practical Counsel (Hardcover) by Benjamin Graham
Topic: Audio Book

The Intelligent Investor: A Book of Practical Counsel (Hardcover)
by Benjamin Graham

Benjamin Graham is called the father of value investing. He was probably the person who systematized the discipline with sound financial framework. Before his works, I think 'value' in value investing was very vague.

Graham served as a professor of finance in Columbia university. He also ran a successful investment operations managing monies of many rich people.

"Securities analysis"- his text book with co-author Dodd is a classic which was first published in 1940's. It continues to see many reprints and editions with little or no change.

I think Graham wrote this book "Intelligent investor" for those people who did not want to or could not understand intricacies of finance but still wanted to understand value investing. In this book, Graham takes out all financial mumbo-jumbo and explains concepts behind value investing in particular and smart investing in general in a way everyone can benefit from.

Graham stresses over and again one thing many investors seem to have forgotten to ask that is "how much?" Without being sensitive to the price and willing to pay any price to a good stock (at least at the moment) is the biggest sin. Even a hot stock with very high growth prospects most of the times fail to deliver adequate returns to justify sky-high price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio.

Graham lays down a strict rule regarding how expensive one can afford to bid for stocks. Normally up to 15 times the average earnings of past 12 years or longer and never more than 25 times the earning. Another important point made is not to attach much importance to projected P/E. Focus on what has happened and ignore projections. Compare this with some high flying stocks such as Google. Google is trading at 67 time its last 12 months earnings. If you use Graham's formula of 25 times the earnings for high growth companies, Google becomes an attractive buy at around 130. We have to wait for quite sometime for that. It can happen if the stock comes down by 50% :)

Overpaying for growth is not a good strategy for investor.

Graham also provides a very nice anecdote as how to withstand volatility of the market especially when the stock that you bought after applying solid value analysis goes down. The analogy used is slightly round about but makes sense. Say, for example, you buy a house for 250, 000. You obviously finance it with a mortgage of say 200,000. Your monthly payment is say USD 2000. Does your mortgage lender care if your house is apprised at say 175,000 after some years because real estate market went down? Probably not because your lender is more interested in making sure that you are able to make timely mortgage payments. Lender will get more concerned if you get laid off and start earning 60,000 instead of earlier income of 100,000. Lender will be concerned with this development even if you are able to meet mortgage payments. Now apply this to stocks. Say you have done solid research on a stock which is trading at say 18 times its earnings and is paying steadily increasing dividends with increasing net income. Stock market which is driven by many irrational emotions of people prices your stock say 10% below the price you paid for without any significant changes to fundamentals. Your company continues to produce good results, pays regular dividends and manages itself well. Should you be concerned very much just because market has priced your stock down by 10% than when you bought? If you are an investor, probably not. You are not going to sell it and take losses. You are going to "buy and hold". When should you get concerned, you should get concerned if fundamentals change or if the stock moves up and become pricier for no good reason. That's the time to sell and take some profit or eat up the loss if you have to.

This books is not for speculators who want to buy and sell frequently to make some money. Nobody has been able to make money consistently by trading in and out of the market. Money in stocks is made by looking yourself as a business owner (which you indeed are) and choosing to become the owner of companies with solid fundamentals and not some phony dot com with fancy ratios such price-to-vision and is trading at infinite P/E (because it has never reported any plosive earnings).

Great book. We do not need more validity for Graham's timeless principles than any other fact that Warren Buffet who is one of the most successful investors of all times is a staunch follower of Graham's principles. In fact, Buffet was a student of Graham when Buffet got his maters from Columbia. Buffet also worked as part of Graham's investment company.

If you read or listen to this book, do share your comments.

Cheers!

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In Hostile Territory : Business Secrets of a Mossad Combatant (Hardcover) by Gerald Westerby
Topic: Books....

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Change
Topic: Quotable Quotes

"Easiest thing in the world for you to be is yourself. Hardest thing for you to be is the person that others want you to be."

This quote should not be taken to mean that we should not change at all. I think what this means is that it is easiest to be who we are and hardest thing is to be someone that others want us to be. I think the value of the quote is in recognizing this fact and to realize the enormous amount of effort that we have to put in to transform ourselves.

One more thing that we observe after some maturity is that harder we try to transform ourselves, difficult it becomes. This is because everything has a rhythm and we cannot alter that. We want to instill many positive habits and we come to realize that we become successful only when the time is right. As far as change is concerned, it is always difficult and it helps to take it easy. It is also true that slow and steady change lasts where as something that we want to change right now does not even if it changes for a short time.

It can be very frustrating to live with limitations and things that we desperately want to change. It may make more sense to do our best to work on the transformation consistently and steadily and hope for the permanent transformation. We can rest assured that it will happen.

It is interesting to observe that anything positive takes long time to happen and most of the negatives take much less time to transform. Take example of how easy it is to get hooked to nicotine or alcohol or gain weight. So, always be on the guard rather than first effecting a negative transformation and then getting all frustrated not being able to go back to where you were.

Transformation should be looked as something that lasts. Trying to transform things, which are bound to change, does not help. All such change is only temporary. However transforming consciousness is what we want to aim for. Aim to transform consciousness for better on daily basis. Meditation is a natural choice for this purpose. Meditation is often compared to a chisel, which chip away everything that is ungodly leaving on our real self. The chisel of meditation when used with the hammer of determination (or will), consciousness loses all ungodly chips and gets sculpted to divine self.

Cheers!

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Perfection
Topic: Quotable Quotes

"Aim for stars. But, grab what you can."

"Plan for success and not for perfection."

"Perfection is the enemy of good."

"Fear lurks behind perfection."

There are many such quotes exhorting us to get things done without worrying about perfection. Good enough is good enough. If we pick up any self-help book on how to overcome procrastination, invariably we find that most of them point to the fact that it is people who are sensitive, careful, cautious and with above average intelligence are more prone to procrastination and perfection. It's a sad irony. These people are the ones who have right stuff to get work done. But, they worry so much about the end result that many times they give up or run out of time or get stressed out. Look it the careless, insensitive moron, who starts the thing without much thought but ploughs along regardless of what comes on the way. They are not helped with anything a sensitive and intelligent person can help himself or herself with. Their one and only weapon brute force. It's unfortunate but true that they are the ones ultimately get something done when majority of sensitive souls aiming for perfection, wither away.

One way to overcome procrastination is by time boxing your activity. That is 2 hours for something means that's it. Regardless of how much time you may have, you stop at the end of pre-decided time and take a look at your project and then make conscious decision if you want to spend more time. Also, look at your project as you look at your business deals, customers or anything. On such things you always pay attention to how much you are going to spend in terms of efforts and money and what you are going to get. Same thing applies to your own activities.

Hope we get the stars when we shoot for them. If not, meteors are okay too. Grab as many of them on you way back :)

Cheers!

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